


Grenade

by Celticas



Series: Soulmate Songs [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Christmas, F/M, Seriously all of the angst, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 03:47:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17134367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celticas/pseuds/Celticas
Summary: Jemma Simmons would just like a quiet Christmas tucked up in her new lab in Avengers Tower. If she could just get through te holiday season undisturbed by memories of her past she would be happy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [volans15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/volans15/gifts).



> Description of suicide/over dose (depending on how you read it)! This is not a happy Christmas story. I'm hoping that the second chapter will be happier but I'm not counting on it.  
> Very minor implied self-harm.  
> Ok, maybe the third will be happier? No really, it should be....

Jemma hated Christmas. While other people got bright eyed and nostalgic for their picture perfect childhood Christmases, Jemma was reminded of every single bad thing that had happened in her life. The first Christmas that she could remember was also the start of it. It was two days before Christmas in 1992 and Patrick Simmons had taken his 5 year old daughter to meet Santa. The young girl stood patiently in line, excited eyes trying to take in all of the colours and laughter at once. Slowly the line inched forward as each child was collected by an elf to be set on Santa’s knee and have their photos taken with the magical man.

Evan at 5, Jemma was beginning to doubt the myths of a single person being able to visit every child in the world on one night. But she still had enough little kids wonder to not be certain in her logic, there were things she knew as Truth even if she didn’t understand the hows or whys behind them, that she would allow a lack of a proper grasp of the science behind Santa.

So it was an excited but slightly sceptical Jemma Simmons stepped forward to meet the very pretty elf that was waiting for her at the front of the line. A quick glance up for assurance via a tight smile, Jemma skipped the few feet to the waiting elf, honey blonde curls bouncing with the movement.

“Your daughter is adorable.” The elf said, her words falling just short of an exhausted sneer.

The supernova bright flash of Soul Words being spoke drowned out the phosphourescent flash of the camera. All sound fell away, people turning to stare, whispers starting that one of the parents was part of the newly met pair. Most Soul Meetings were met with applauds and well wishes. Not this one.

It was almost impossible to have a child with someone who wasn’t your Soul Mate and the few people who managed it were derided by society. Outcasts.

Jemma had never realised that her parent weren’t mated, even if they weren’t as happy as everybody else’s mummy and daddy.

As the widest smile she had ever seen on her dad’s face grew, Jemma burst into tears. Daddy couldn’t be Soul Mated with an elf, cause if he was he would have to move to the North Pole and leave her behind.

“Sometimes.” Her father spoke, sending up a second life changing flare.

Under the disapproving eyes of the line of parents, the two newly Mated couple swapped details before Patrick hustled his daughter out of the shopping centre, tears still running down her cheeks. The drive home wasn’t long enough for Jemma to fully calm down and she was still quietly sniffling as Patrick dragged her inside. With the door closed, he let her go, before bounding upstairs. She stood in the middle of the small lounge room, arms wrapped around her waist in lonely misery as she listened to cupboards opening and closing above her.

Without a word, Patrick reappeared with a bulging suitcase and was out the door. Jemma stood, silently crying in the middle of that loungeroom as the sun set, waiting for her father to come back. Finally hours past Jemma’s bedtime, her mum returned from work, exhaustion pulling her shoulders down. It has been a long chaotic shift in the local emergency department. Without turning on any lights Meredith stumbled up the stairs of the silent house. It was only when she was half way through undressing that the sense of something being out of place wormed it way to the front of her sleep deprived mind.

Pulling on her dressing gown, she checked her daughter’s room. The neatly made bed hurried her steps. She checked the bathroom on the second floor, also empty, before hurtling downstairs. Flicking on the lights she squeaked, startled, when she saw Jemma standing still as a statue in the middle of the room.

“Honey, what are you doing down here?” Crouching down to 5 year old eye level, Meredith brushed hair out of Jemma’s face.

Jemma blinked, seeming to only just realise her mum was there.

“Where’s your father?” Meredith asked, standing up and looking around the room for Patrick as if they were playing some bastardised version of hide-and-go-seek.

Jemma shrugged.

“Sweetheart, you need to tell me what happened!” Meredith’s voice rose in frustration and concern.

“He mated.” Jemma whispered, barely audible over the traffic outside.

“Oh.” Meredith breathed understanding out. Her mind shut down. “Time for bed.”

A gently hand on her daughter’s back, guided her up the stairs and into her room. Meredith left her daughter standing in the middle of her light pink bedroom and retreated to her own.

Jemma never got her photo with Santa.

Jemma shook herself from her thoughts and threw on a sound track she only used in the lab when she was alone. Trying anything to drown out the thoughts in her head and the thumping music from the party in the upper levels of Avenger’s Tower. Just like everyone else Christmas was about family, unlike most others for her it wasn’t about them coming together it was about them being broken apart until they no longer resembled the little family they had started as. After that first horrible Christmas, Jemma never saw her father again.

She slammed a slide into the microscope and furiously twisted the focus nobs. She had work to do.

Even with music blaring and a sample to focus on her mind still drifted. From her father to her mother.

The reduced family stumbled and shuffled their way through two years together. Two years where many of their friends and family abandoned them upon learning that Meredith and Patrick weren’t Mated as they had always said they were. Two years of struggling to pay their bills. Two years without a word from Jemma’s father.

As Christmas approached Jemma was confronted with the same awkward questions from friends and teachers about holiday traditions. The Christmas before had passed in silence and gin in the Simmons house, little Jemma closed in her room trying to lose herself in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. She fully expected this year to pass the same, but how to you explain that silence to someone who had never experienced it?

With a heavy heart, Jemma left school on the last day before the winter break. For two weeks it would be just her and her mum. It was a long cold walk home through the snow that had fallen earlier in the week and melted into a grey slush that quickly soaked through the worn boots that were the best her mum could buy on a single nurse’s salary.

Quietly turning the key and slipping into the cold house, she crept up the stairs and only once her bedroom door was securely closed behind her did, she breath out. She fully expected her mum to have crawled halfway into a bottle by this point and the last thing she wanted to do was draw attention.

The house was silent around her. Maybe Meredith had gone to the pub? Maybe she wouldn’t be home tonight? Jemma brightened slightly at the thought. Slowly, carefully, she cracked her door open. Still nothing from beyond the safety of her room. She tiptoed out of her room and stood, pressed against wall at the top of the stairs, listening for any movement down stairs. There was nothing. Still on tiptoes, she crept through each of the rooms on the ground floor, only after confirming that she was along did Jemma drop to flat feet.

In the quiet house it didn’t take Jemma long to whip up a toasted sandwich and find an old episode of Doctor Who to watch. It was one of her better evenings at home in a long time. Three episodes and two sandwiches later, she turned off all of the lights and went upstairs again to get ready for bed. It was still early but better to be in her room and unnoticeable when her mum came home.

She grabbed her cat pyjamas from her room and hurried into the bathroom. Turning on the lights she dropped her clothes. Her mum’s glazed eyes stared at her unseeing from the bathtub. She edged forward across the cold tiles, two fingertips against her mum’s cold wrist had her stumbling backwards.

There was no pulse.

Jemma stumbled back. Away. She stood pressed against the unforgiving wood of the bathroom door for a long time, having a staring contest with someone who would never blink. Eventually, Jemma was able to force her cold limbs to edge out of the bathroom. In the hallway she gulped breaths as if she had been running a marathon or had been drowning. She stumbled down the stairs and out of the front door. Her little feet not feeling the cold of freshly fallen snow. She began to run. The front door hanging open, a dark square of nothing fading from sight as she ran.

She didn’t know how long she ran. Her legs were shaking with exhaustion and her nails and lips were blue with exposure. Stumbling to a stop she finally started paying attention to where she was. The buildings around her were tall offices that were dark and uninviting in the crisp winter air.

Unable to run any more, she walked. When she couldn’t do that she sunk onto the snow covered curb. No one to look for her, no one to care that she was missing.

Jemma pushed herself away from the lab bench, annoyed at herself. She was normally better at _not_ thinking about her shitty childhood. Maybe the difference this year was that everyone she cared about, her team, her found family, were all upstairs with their _actual_ family or Soul Mates while she was once again alone. She had thought after those miserable chistmases in foster care and the lonely holiday seasons at the boarding school she had worked so hard to get into, that she would never have to face another Christmas alone. But here she was. In a cold lab with the only illumination coming from the single lamp on her bench. Trying to drown out the jangle Christmas tunes from above with the most obnoxious pop songs she could find. A single tear worked it’s way down her cheek. She knew that she would be welcomed with open arms upstairs, but she couldn’t make herself go.

With life looking up after the Avengers had taken the Bus team in after the fall of SHIELD, she had made the fatal mistake of looking her father up. She found him. He had a new family. A new daughter, born almost nine months to the day after that stupid Soul Meeting in front of that awful Santa display. In the week since, Jemma hadn’t been able to shake the hurt. It was just another reminder that she didn’t really have anywhere to go.

A quick swipe of her hand removed the tear from her face and she flicked the music up another couple of decibels just as Bruno Mars began singing about his own dysfunctional relationship. At the top of her lungs and more than a little off tune, she began singing along, let the hurt and frustration twist the words.

“Gave you all I had and you tossed in in the trash. You tossed it in the trash, you did.” She moved with the words. Twisting and turning around the dark space.

She was so caught up in the song that the quiet hiss of the doors opening passed her by.

“I’d jump in front of a train for ya.” Tears were running freely down her checks, splashing against the linoleum.

Turning again, she opened her eyes, locking shocked eyes with the newcomer. Unable to stop herself, the words poured from her mouth. “Black and blue. Beat me till I’m numb.”

The flash of Soul Words was blinding in the otherwise dark room. She stuttered to a halt, the music drowning out her harsh breaths.

Bright blue eyes stared at her.

“I’ll never lay a finger on you.” He said, his voice gravelly with conviction and neglect.

A second flash showed them as matched pair in their hurts.

They looked at each other stunned as the music petered off into silence, it had been the last song on the playlist.

The sudden silence spurred him into movement. In seconds he was back out the door and into the stairwell. Again, Jemma found herself alone, heartsore at Christmas because of a Soul Meeting, face wet with tears.

Again she ran. Out of the lab and into a waiting elevator, she was soon on the almost deserted street and moving. Moving away, away from a man who didn’t want he.  Away from the memories that even two decades later wouldn’t leave her alone. Away from the festivities and cheer that her friends had found that was still beyond her grasp.


	2. Chapter 2

In the aftershock of the second flash of light, Bucky froze. He had only been trying to get away from the overwhelming crowds and light and noise upstairs. He had been wandering the corridors of each successive floor, trying to slip into the still mindset that would allow him to get some rest. Exiting the stairs on the lab levels he had expected to be alone, as he had been on every other level so the thumping bass of some unknown modern pop song and the high voice of a woman singing along were a surprise. Why would someone be here? Alone, in the dark?

He had slipped silently through the long, gleaming glass and metal corridors of the level, only realising it was the laboratories when he was halfway between the stairs and the origin of the music. He paused, a good portion of him screaming to return to the dark, quiet of the stairs. He hadn’t ventured into the science areas of the building before now. The gleaming surfaces and white lab coats too reminiscent of the Hydra labs he had been kept in for so long.

The movement of honey blonde hair pulled into a neat ponytail was what decided him. Silent even in heavy combat boots he slipped into the room, entranced by the emotions pouring of the other occupant.

“Take a bullet straight through my brain.” The words were almost screamed, yelled with a ferocity that spoke to the broken parts of his mind. The tears that accompanied them starting to wash away some of the hurt within his own soul.

She turned with the music, crystal blue eyes locking with his. “Black and blue. Beat me till I’m numb.” Bucky recognised the words even as she sung them. They had haunted him for years. Even before the fall. He had never wanted to image that he could end up like his father, but his Soul Words had taunted him. Even his Soul Mate had thought him capable of the violence that had ripped his mother apart.

The words then the burn of their accompanying light rocked him, pushed him back one step and then another.

On the opposite side of the room her frantic movements stumbled to a halt, the anger and sadness that had infused her earlier movements were replaced with shock and more fear than he was comfortable with.

“I’ll never lay a finger on you.” He tried to reassure her but even as the Soul flare flashed he _knew_ it was the wrong thing to say. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know what to do, what to say, what to _feel._

The music continued.

They stared at each other. His breath settling into the sniper calm pattern that was second nature. Her’s struggling to return to a normal rhythm after her dancing.

The music stopped.

He ran.

Quick steps had him out of the lab and into the stairwell before he realised he was moving. His mind had checked out and deeply ingrained survival instincts moving his body to the only place he had been able to deem safe, Steve’s room. Deserted in favour of the Christmas party that Bucky had originally been trying to escape. The suite was dark, the only illumination coming from the floor to ceiling windows that provided a spectacular vista across Manhattan.

He had a room of his own right next door, but it was cold and impersonal. He had nothing to fill it with, the way Stevie’s room was filled. With photos, and books, and drawings, and soft things like pillows and blankets.

It was lived in.

Dragging one of the blankets off the couch he tucked himself into the corner of the living room where the wall met the window. With the blanket curled around his shoulders he watched the few people still on the snowy street move about their lives. As he watched a small, bright figure flashed into sight at the bottom of the tower, moving at a run. The neon lights of the surrounding buildings sparked off honey blonde hair. With his serum enhanced sight he could see it was the woman from the lab. His Soul Mate.

“Jarvis?” He asked into the quiet apartment. It was the first time that he had directly addressed the omniscient AI. But she wouldn’t have had time to collect warm things before fleeing the building.

“How many I help you Sargent Barnes?” The AI’s smooth English accent seemed to float in the still air.

“She… I….” He started and then stopped. What did he want? He wanted to make sure she was safe. He wanted to hide from the world until things started making sense again. He wasn’t allowed to want a voice that sounded like his own whispered in the back of his mind. Wanting things hurt, it reminded him. His voice closed off with a chocked sob. A metal hand that he knew was his but not wrapped itself into his hair and pulled, punishment for wanted. Machines weren’t allowed to want, and he was a machine.  

Hurried footsteps sounded in the corridor outside the apartment. Moving at a speed that only two people in the building were capable of. Him and Steve.

“Bucky!” Before he was even through the door, Steve was calling out to him. He was through the door with a crash as the wood violently connected with the wall.

Bucky whimpered at the sound. An almost inaudible sound of distress.

Steve’s steps slowed, softened. He hunched as he approached his best friend, trying to compress his frame to be less threatening. “What happened? You were doing ok earlier.” Steve sat half way between Bucky and the door, leaving plenty of space for the traumatised assassin to escape if he needed too.

“No.” Bucky forced the word out between clenched teeth. “No. No. No.” He chanted under his breath, fingers tightening further in his hair, he began to rock back and forth.

“Ok. Its ok.” Steve held up his hands in surrender and retreated to the hall. “Jarvis, what happened.” He tried not to use the AI to spy on Bucky, but the other man hadn’t been this bad since the first few days after they brought him in.

“Sargent Barnes met his soul mate tonight, under less than ideal circumstances.” The AI hedged. Captain Rogers had permission to know any and all information pertaining to Sargent Barnes, but he did not have permission to known anything about Doctor Simmons and the competing processes were trying to cancel each other out. Under neather the programming Jarvis was concerned, he liked the normally bubbly biochemist and she had fled the building without anyone knowing, into a brewing storm and without appropriate clothing. He carefully picked words that would provide the most information without flagging the permissions. “It might be wise to speak to security in the lobby.” The AI fell silent again.

“The lobby?” Steve asked, confused. Had Bucky been down there? In the months that he had been in the tower he hadn’t left the top ten floors. He hadn’t given any indication that he wanted to leave. “Is his Soul Mate down there?” Steve asked when Jarvis didn’t respond to the first question.

The AI remained stubbornly silent.

“Can you ask Clint to come and keep an eye on Bucky?” Steve asked. The two men had had a rocky start but fallen into a warped friendship that was heavily inclined to long silences and sparks of activity that normally centred around competitions on the range.

“Of course, Captain Rogers.” Jarvis was able to respond to that one.

Steve was pacing the hallway when Clint appeared from the party.

“What’s cookin’ good lookin’?” Clint joked before the smirk fell from his face upon catching sight of Steve’s expression. “What happened?” He rephrased, sincerity and concern lacing his words.

“I’m not sure. Can you watch Bucky while I find out?” Steve didn’t wait for an answer, he was halfway down the hallway before he had even finished speaking and by the time Clint responded he was gone.

Although he wanted to move Steve opted for the elevators instead of the stairs. It would be faster even if having to stand still made it feel terminally longer. The elevator doors opened to a deserted lobby. Marble and chrome sparkled in the few lights that were able to penetrate the snow swirling on the other side of the glass.

“Captain Rogers Senor.” One of the security guards at the visitor’s desk jumped to his feet. “We’ve been trying to call someone upstairs. That nice doctor, Simmons I think, ran out into the storm about half an hour ago. She looked bad. Like she had been crying.” The man’s Mexican accent thickened with concern. “I was about the call the police.”

“Thank you, Edgardo.” Steve made a point of learning the guards and cleaners’ names. “Did you see which way she went?”

“Toward Times Square. Senor.” Edgardo pointed in the direction Jemma had fled.

Steve bend his head and pushed out the doors into the thickening blizzard. He moved as quickly as he could while calling out for Doctor Simmons and peering through the storm. For blocks he fought against the wind. Trying to listen for anyone else on the deserted streets. There couldn’t be that many people crazy enough to be out in this weather.

Running against the wind he hadn’t realised he had reached Times Square until the neon signs lit the snow in a rainbow of movement. With the extra light he was able to see further through the storm.

“Doctor Simmons?” He yelled into the maelstrom.

A sob off to his right was the first sign of another living being on the streets aside from himself.

“Jemma?” He moved towards the sound. Almost stumbling over the hunched over woman who was covered in snow and shivering even as she cried. He crouched beside her and lay a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Jemma?” He asked again, pitching his voice to be heard over the noise the wind made as it wound between the buildings.

She blinked up at him, confused by his presence. He could see it in her eyes, she didn’t recognise him and probably had little idea where she was.

“Come on. I’ve got you.” He gathered her to his chest and picked her up. Shoulders hunched against the wind he began working his way back to the tower. It was slow going with the freezing scientist in his arms and the wind continually trying to pluck her from his grasp.

He shouldered his way back through the glass doors into the lobby of the tower with no concept of how long they had been out in the storm.

“Senor Captain! Senority Doctor.” Edgardo hurried towards them with a pile of blankets in his arms, Doctor Banner half a step behind him.

“Steve! Are you ok? How’s Jemma?” Bruce was already reaching out a hand to start taking vitals.

“I’m ok. She isn’t.” Steve answered, laying to insensate biochemist onto a gurney that Bruce had had brought down.

He stepped back to allow Bruce and his team to begin their assessment, watching as they hurried her into a waiting elevator and flew her off to the medical floors.

Moving slower, Steve took a different elevator to his own floor. He needed to check on Bucky. The elevator opened on a silent corridor, which led to a silent apartment. Clint was curled into one end of the couch with Phil, both of them watching Bucky who while still pressed into the corner had abandoned pulling his own hair in favour of cradling a mug that was full of one of Natasha’s Russian teas.

“How is she?” Phil asked, he didn’t needed to ask if Steve had found his scientist, if he hadn’t he would still be out there.

“Alive. Bruce is looked at her. She’s hurting. I don’t know why though.” Steve said hoping it would spur some movement in Bucky.

Instead it garnered a response from Phil, who sighed deeply. “She doesn’t do well with the holidays. I don’t know much but she didn’t have a very happy childhood with a lot of the problems happening around Christmas.”

Bucky looked up at Phil’s words. He had known that she was hurting even as he watched her dance and listened to her agonising singing.

“Will she be ok?” His question was whispered. He had to roll it around his head before he could say them, make sure they were allowed.

“I don’t know buddy.” Steve sat against the wall, leaving a good few feet between them.

The four of them lapsed into silence. Sitting an odd vigil as the storm raged outside. Dawn was welcomed with a soft nock on the door, Bruce’s drawn face appearing through the door. Seeing who he was looking for inside he entered fully.

“Doctor Simmons came in with hypothermia and has caught pneumonia. Because of Steve’s quick actions in finding her we were able to start a warming protocol and wide spectrum antibiotics. She is asleep and not out of the woods, but I expect her to make a full recovery.” He spoke to Phil. The agent was listed as the young doctor’s next of kin and had a right to know her medical status. “You can sit with her if you like.” He offered the other man.

Before Phil could process the news and reply, Bucky was upright.

“Can…” He wasn’t able to finish the sentence. He wasn’t allowed to want. “Guard.” He said instead. The other four looked at him in confusion. Slowly Bucky’s hand crept towards his hair in anxiety. Wanting hurt.

“You want to guard her?” Steve ventured a guess at his meaning.

Bucky flinched at his words.

“Ok no.” Steve hurried to covered what ever mistake he had made.

“You need to stand guard.” Clint broke in.

Bucky’s hand paused in it’s upwards motion.

“You will stand guard.” Clint said, putting some force into the words. An order the other man could follow.

Steve scowled at the words, hearing the command. He had been trying to keep from telling Bucky to do anything, it needed to be his choice.

A tiny smile, more a lifting of a corner of a lip then a true smile, broke across Bucky’s face. The whole situation was too emotionally fraught for the still broken man to navigate and without clear cut orders, his mind had retreated from the world. Now with a set of instructions he could move forward. Without waiting for anything else to be said that could complicate the situation, he left the suite, taking the stairs two at a time down into the medical ward.

He took up position in the corner of Jemma’s room and waited.

He waited and watched as the sun continued to rise and medical personnel bustled in and out of the room. Watched as they checked charts and injected medication. Waited as each breath left her lungs for the next to enter.

The sun was moving towards the far horizon when she moved. The slightest flicker of an eyelash, the twitch of a finger. For an hour muscles moved and stilled as her mind rose from unconsciousness.

Finally, her eyes fluttered open. Blue eyes roving around the bland, white room until they settled on Bucky.

He knew he needed to say something. But what?

“Hello.” He whispered.


	3. Chapter 3

For months they moved around each other. The intricate dance of two bodies locked in a gravitational pull that was only ever going to end with their collision. From that first day in the hospital until she was discharged, Bucky didn’t move more than 10 feet away from her side.

Then he retreated.

His mind needed time to process. To try and slot the changes that had occurred into an already fragmented mind. To reconcile want and need, person and machine. He shut his door and hid from the world.

A floor lower, Jemma did the same. Stamina worn to the bone from the pneumonia, her body didn’t allow her usual escape into science. Instead, the disappointments that her life and the people in it had heaped upon her shoulders played a marching band across her mind. She would never forgive her father for leave, unable and unwilling to understand why he did it. Her mother was a different story. Meredith had been broken by Patrick and she had allowed it to define the rest of her life and in the end her death. It was only now, forced to confront it, that Jemma realised she had been doing the same. Always keeping one step between herself and others, even her team whom she trusted with her life, just not her heart.

Health returning, Jemma returned to the world. Returned to her safe haven in the labs and slowly found a new warmth with the people around her. Movie nights with Skye spent giggling over rom-coms that made Fitz groan. Science benders with Fitz, and Banner, and Stark that lasted days with innovations flowing from the lab at an astounding rate (even for a department with Stark at its helm). Long quiet evenings with Coulson curled into opposite ends of a couch with a pot of tea and a book each. Slowly she opened her heart.

For weeks Bucky returned to the ghost that had first drifted between rooms on the residential floors of the tower. On valentine’s day he stood in front of Steve in the common room. “I want.” He whispered to his best friend. He couldn’t say what he wanted. He could hardly think it. But he could admit there was something there. The struggle to stay, the struggle to not twine his fingers into his hair and pull was all consuming.

Steve’s sunshine smile was enough to ease the burden, the quieten the voice screaming in the back of Bucky’s mind. For ten long seconds Bucky was able to stand within the imaginary echo of the words before he needed to retreat. The next day it was eleven, and the day after twelve. When he managed to stand in front of Steve for thirty seconds after muttering the words, he went in search of _her_. The one who had changed everything just by showing her own pain. Clint had been talking at him. Telling him how she was reaching out in spite of the hurt she carried so close to her heart, hidden so well just under the surface of a bubbly personality so well that Clint had missed it.

He found her in the same lab he had first seen her in, this time surrounded by people and their noise and light and _life_. This time he didn’t slip into the room unheard, unnoticed. He walked in, head held as high as he could managed, trying not to shrink away from the quiet that fell at his entrance.

“I want.” He whispered to her.

“I know.” She said back.

They smiled shyly at each other for thirty seconds and then Bucky retreated.


End file.
